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i'm anne boccock and welcome to between
the covers summer series with me is
diana abu jabar and she is the
award-winning author of seven books her
latest is a novel fencing with the king
diana hi and the last time that we
talked it was your memoir it was life
without a recipe which is a family story
well now we have a novel and this is
also about a family
give me a quick look at what this is
well uh fencing with the king is a kind
of family story even though it's fiction
it has a
starting place in my family's
background
my father was an immigrant to this
country and he
used to fence with king hussein and i
got the idea that it would be really
kind of a cool thing to explore a what
if what if an immigrant to this country
who used to fence with the king got an
invitation to do a rematch and
the the gist of the story follows the
idea of this immigrant and his daughter
returning to the old country
basically so the daughter can discover
her own heritage and her own cultural
upbringing and a mysterious letter from
her grandmother so
it's all wrapped up in this kind of
investigation and
and the story of the fencing match gets
played out um toward the end of the
novel i like how you just slip in there
that you have a family member that was
fencing with king hussein
this story you talk about the
granddaughter uncovering a secret and
this is a with a grandmother
that she knew nothing about i'm curious
is there somehow a connection to your
own grandmother perhaps
very much so um
i
never knew my maternal grandmother and
i'm sorry my paternal grandmother
she died before i was born but i had
this experience one day when i was back
in jordan i was
visiting some of the crusader castles
out in the desert
and one of the bedouin who
was a caretaker
came up to me out of the blue
looked straight at me and said anissa
and that was my grandmother's name
and i became very interested in this
idea of
whether you can have a relationship with
someone who is no longer there someone
you've never actually met in person
and
that became the mystery
that amani has to solve in fencing with
the king she finds a letter from her
grandmother and she wants to find out
who is this person what did this letter
mean um and she has to track down her
her connection to her grandmother
through a series of mysteries that she
uncovers
while traveling around jordan well you
may have just answered this but what
surprised you most in your research was
it the fencing connection was it that
you looked like your grandmother
there were so many surprises in this
novel um
i didn't know that my father even knew
how to fence much less that he fenced
with king hussein
i didn't know that my grandmother was
such a
thinker and a writer that she wrote
poetry
and in the novel amani discovers
a man in a cave
and that was one of my biggest
discoveries in my own life
i discovered that i had a relative who
the family had sort of hidden away
and i don't want to give too many
spoilers i'll just say that the man in
the cave
in large part was inspired by the
discovery of a missing relative
and that was a huge
uh surprise is probably an
understatement for me yeah well in this
book i i have to say the research must
have been fantastic i want to know diana
is there
one particular thing that you want
readers to take away from fencing with
the king
well i i really am interested in
having
as much exploration as possible into a
wonderful wide diversity of stories and
voices and i feel like we're opening up
to all kinds of different perspectives
now i'd love to see
more of the arab and arab american
experience in our mainstream i feel like
it's so important
this story is in large part about the
development of the peace process
largely through the middle east with
israel
and what that looked like
i'm really hoping that people will
connect with this idea of
looking at our ancestry as a way of
understanding who we are
and how we can connect with each other
to better go forward
toward peace
well i i will say that the book takes
place in the 90s if i am correct in
jordan
a part of i guess history literature
that we don't normally read about
correct
it's really true i was shocked actually
the other day i saw that
my novel had been listed
under the shelf of historical fiction
you know i remember the 90s very well
and so a lot of the
experiences of amani who goes to jordan
when she's 30 years old they are very
much a reflection of my own experiences
of going to jordan in the
1990s but it's also tied to that
political era when the madrid accords
and the oslo peace accords were underway
and
things were really
looking very exciting and very rich and
fresh in the region so
it is very much a piece of that time
well the book is fencing with the king
and i'd like to just switch gears for a
little bit and do a lightning round
about you the author
i want to know
first what's the craziest job you ever
had before you were an author
oh that's that's a great question um it
might be
i shouldn't admit to this but i was
for one year i was miss oswego i won one
of these pageants um because i needed
money for
college and i thought i could win the
the third place which was 300 but i i
accidentally won first place
and
for a year
i had to go to fishing tournaments and
hold up fish and
shake hands at ribbon cutting ceremonies
and ride in sun roofs and cars on parade
and
pageant queen things so i'm going to
remember that for the next time that i
interview you and instead of
award-winning author of its pageant girl
all the way
i would like to know on your bucket list
what would be the vacation spot
i have never been to venice and that is
something that
i have wanted to go for years and i'm
actually writing my next book set in
venice so i have to go there oh if you
need a research assistant i i'm your
girl
another question
all mothers i know that all mothers have
super powers but if you could have any
superpower what would it be
oh gosh well you know i'm constantly
telling my daughter that i have eyes in
the back of my head
um but i personally i think it would be
really cool to be able to fly that would
be my big vote to be able to fly
anywhere like to feminist perhaps and uh
you know have instant vacations without
having to sit in um
you know
a coach
and i know you're a great cook so on
days that you don't want to cook what's
your go-to food
oh gosh um i think it's probably pizza
that we've got a great pizza place down
the road from us and uh we can walk
there and i've actually been thinking
about going there today
and my last question the best guidance
that you were ever given by your family
oh gosh
well um
let's see i would have to say
that it was my mother
she
saw that i was really struggling with my
first memoir the language of baklava
because i didn't want to hurt anyone's
feelings and my mom finally said to me
um you know i know you don't want to
upset anyone but at the end of the day
you know what i say about the family i
say
the heck with the family actually she
didn't use that word she used a more
zesty word but um
she told me to go ahead and tell my
story that my story belongs to me
and it was a great moment of being given
permission by a really important person
in my life great advice from your mother
diana thank you so much the book is
fencing with the king
thanks again
thank you anne
i'll see you on the next between the
covers
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